It should seriously look into the matter and introduce schemes that have a varied range of conditions
LAHORE: I would like to draw the attention of the authorities concerned in the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony regarding their recent advertisement for the 2019-20 financial year scholarships for minority students. According to the advertisement, only those students whose parent’s monthly income is Rs10,000 for school level and Rs20,000 for college-level are eligible for the scholarship. Surprisingly, this condition of parent’s monthly income has remained stayed unchanged for the past many years, without taking into account the inflation rate.
According to the 2019-20 budget, the federal government and the provincial governments of Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have raised the minimum wage for unskilled workers from Rs15,000 to Rs17,500 while the government of Sindh has raised the minimum wage from Rs16,200 to Rs17,000 per month. Even a general labourer is earning Rs24,000 per month.
One wonders that even an unskilled worker and daily- wage labourer are earning more than the set criterion for the scholarship, in spite of the fact that they are getting minimum wage, who then is getting these scholarships in the name of minorities. Majority of the minority population are not receiving any such aid or scholarship. The government should immediately stop the anomaly. It should seriously look into the matter and introduce schemes that have a varied range of conditions so that these resources are available to all types of minorities.
Emmanuel Yousaf
Published in The Express Tribune, September 15th, 2019.
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